Newport Folk Festival includes stage powered by bicycles

By PAT EATON-ROBB
Associated Press

NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — The Newport Folk Festival is known for creating electrifying musical moments, and this weekend it is powering a small stage in part by festival-goers on stationary bikes. The Rhode Island festival is famously known for Bob Dylan’s decision to plug in his guitar in 1965. Now decades later, the Bike Stage is the brainchild of the band Illiterate Light, an environmentally conscious indie rock duo from Virginia. The band has partnered with a company called Rock the Bike to create a pedal-powered sound system, which they have been using at small club shows. Frontman Jeff Gorman said Newport’s “Bike Stage” is the first time the system has been tried at a festival.